Want to keep up with the ever-advancing continuity porn of the DC and Marvel universes, but simply don’t have the time or money to buy every ongoing? We’re here to help. The Weekend Week In Review aims to give you ((usually) very) brief synopses of what happened in a select few of DC and Marvel’s titles – with a helping of sarcastic commentary – so that when some nasty old writer wants to punish you by heavily referencing a title you didn’t pick up, you won’t be left in the dark. Of course, that means that spoilers are in abundance after the cut, but I figure that you could figure that out.
Remember when a young Superman was making his debut by fighting the invading Brainiac in the pages of “Action Comics?” Remember how that story… never finished? Well, it resumed today in the pages of “Action Comics” #7, as Superman ran faster than a speeding bullet in order to launch himself into space after the alien intelligence’s spacecraft. Jumping from satellite to satellite – no wonder my television signal was spotty last night – the Kryptonian latched onto Brainiac’s ship, but was soon overpowered by the tentacled security system. Supes was only out for a minute, though, avoiding a hentai-esque fate and fighting his way through Brainiac’s minions until arriving at the invader’s impressive collection of bottled cities. Meanwhile, in the bottled portion of Metropolis, the city’s greatest scientific mind was hard at work figuring out how to escape:
Yeah, you can bet they didn’t go anywhere all issue. Clark didn’t seem to care much about the fine art of city-bottling, and called out Brainiac (otherwise known as the internet… yes, really). Despite Brainiac’s seeming capability of beating the snot of Superman – for now, at least – he gave Big
Blue
White with Blue Jeans the classic gambit: let the people of Kandor live while the citizens of Metropolis are left to die, or vice versa. Honestly, would you expect Superman to choose between the two? Instead, he picked up possibly the worst fashion choice available on the entire ship, and finally came face-to-face with the new Brainiac, a mix between previous incarnations of the character, along with the human centipede.
Seriously, I’m not the only one who sees that, am I?
“Amazing Spider-Man” #681 found Spider-Man, The Human Torch, and Colonel John Jameson right where #680 left them; that is, being attacked by a crew of space station crewmen and women – well, no, it looks like they’re all men – who were under the influence of Doctor Octopus’s Octobots. Unable to harm those otherwise innocent spacemen, the trio made a break for Johnny’s rocket, only to be greeted by a lovely explosion. Clearly the most pressing concern about this was…
The gang quickly turned tail and made their way to the possibly compromised shuttle in the main hangar, only for it to – surprise surprise – blow up as well! The Torch saved Pete and John from the explosion by absorbing all the heat (as well as the shrapnel, I guess), and the three set to coming up with a Plan C. Despite repeatedly yelling at Johnny for consuming all the oxygen, Pete realized that the best way to take care of the phantom spacemen would be to drain the space station of air until they all passed out. Naturally, our heroes would be wearing space suits. Using Johnny’s fPhone, the group called Horizon Labs back on earth and had them remotely drain the air. Watching from under the seas, though, Doc Ock was none too happy, and remotely caused the space station to come crashing to earth.
Faced with this fate, Pete made his slowly-becoming-more-and-more-tired declaration that “No one dies!” and set about collecting the unconscious crew members using the magnetic webbing that
Slott and Yost
Pete forgot about last issue. Everyone, including the comatose crew, piled into Deep Space Deprivation Chamber, the one thing that could survive re-entry into the atmosphere, so long as Johnny absorbed as much heat as he could. Bet if Otto had examined last issue a bit more, he would have guessed the Deprivation Chamber would have been their ticket out of there and planned accordingly. Sucks for him, and rules for Johnny and Pete.
For a guy who had been run through with a zombie-wielded chainsaw in the previous issue, Alec Holland wasn’t looking so bad at the beginning of “Swamp Thing” #7. True, he was dying at the hands of the head-twisted minions of the Rot, but still, you’d think he would be in a lot worse shape after something like that. In the worst acid flashback imaginable, the Parliament of Trees used their remaining energy to pull his consciousness from his body and regenerated his body every so slightly and slowly, only to make his pain at the hands of the Rot’s foot soldiers last even longer. Man, plants are dicks. The Parliament, it seems, were ticked off that Alec had turned down their offer to once again become the Swamp Thing, and even more so for consorting with Abigail Arcane, and decided that prolonging Alec’s pain and death was an acceptable punishment. Like I said, dicks.
Alec soon launched into a diatribe about how wrong and out of touch the Parliament was, somehow managing to admit that he was wrong in the process and to ask them to make him the Swamp Thing again. That’ll teach ’em! The Parliament considered Alec’s offer, but concluded that he had waited too long, and that they were too weak to trigger the transformation. Lucky for him, them, and probably everyone else, Alec had a final vial of the bio-restorative formula that originally made him Swamp Thing in his bag, which was enough to give the Parliament that extra “oomph.” The Parliament let go of Alec briefly, allowing him to die so that he could once again be taken over by the Green and kick some zombie ass. That’s two separate occasions Alec has come back to life in the past year – is that some kind of record, if you don’t count Johnny Storm’s continual death and rebirth?
This Week’s Contributors were:
Walt – “Action Comics” #7, “Amazing Spider-Man” #681, “Swamp Thing” #7
Matthew – “Avengers: The Children’s Crusade” #9, “Avengers Academy” #27
Anything we didn’t get to that you’re interested in? Email me at the link below! This also applies for if you read something that we didn’t and want to share it with others, as I, too, have only so much money and time to spend on comics. Don’t worry, I’ll give you credit.
